Vst Instrument without having to install the samples

AxiomCrux

@Lindon said in Vst Instrument without having to install the samples:

This a well known pre-condition that isnt going to go away any time soon - what we all do is put a big red comment in the user manual that explains you have to restart the plug-in to get any sound.

that presumes users would read the manual before using or during setup, nobody I know does that, they assume the plugin they just installed will work immediately.

Ideally, this would be fixed or set up so that there is a dialogue that comes up after the sample installation that simply says "samples installed successfully reload the plugin to continue". there already is one that tells you the samples were installed, the text just needs to be amended.

Even more ideally, the package installer would do this before the plugin is even run, the samples would be installed and the plugin would know where they were installed so they don't have to do anything but run the plugin and it works.

I would love to learn enough JUCE to help in implementing these types of things if they are not priorities for the developer. I think of these things as very important, maybe others are ok with this. HISE is so close to being an ideal tool for plugin development, I just think with a few tweaks it would be so much better.

Lindon

@MacroMachines said in Vst Instrument without having to install the samples:

Ideally, this would be fixed or set up so that there is a dialogue that comes up after the sample installation that simply says "samples installed successfully reload the plugin to continue". there already is one that tells you the samples were installed, the text just needs to be amended.

So thats a simple fix in the C++ -- go for it.

I think it might be line 982 in BackgroundThreads.cpp

ustk

@Lindon I think it's worth to add permanently so I'll push a request to @d-healey's fork with the "fix" ;)

Lindon

@ustk said in Vst Instrument without having to install the samples:

@Lindon I think it's worth to add permanently so I'll push a request to @d-healey's fork with the "fix" ;)

er... its not even tested as the right spot....so David will need to do some work...I would do it if I wasn't in the middle of a big development build...

d.healey

I think it's a good idea. I'll take a look when I have a bit of spare time.

ustk

@Lindon Was nothing more than changing the line you kindly spotted :)
@d-healey pull request ;)

Lindon

@ustk cool well done.

ustk

@Lindon I tried to add \nbut it doesn't work. Although I've seen it in some other .cpp using the same message window...
So I let it on one line... any idea?

PresetHandler::showMessageWindow("Samples imported", "All samples were imported successfully.\nPlease relaunch the instrument.");

d.healey

Try \r\n

ustk

@d-healey It doesn't work, it's taken as a literal... Not a big deal though!

AxiomCrux

@ustk Do you maybe have to do it with another quote as in :

PresetHandler::showMessageWindow("Samples imported", "All samples were imported successfully."\n"Please relaunch the instrument.");

or maybe it just requires a space between the /n? as in :

PresetHandler::showMessageWindow("Samples imported", "All samples were imported successfully. \n Please relaunch the instrument.");

AxiomCrux

@ustk Also, as far as my other mentioned slightly more ideal option, do you know what it is that happens upon plugin load that makes it so it works when you reload it? Is there any possible way to trigger the sample references or whatever is happening to be re-initialized automatically upon hitting OK on the popup? I realize that might be slightly more complex than the text solution, just figured it might be worth asking, as then it would simply work without needing to reload at all.

Either way good work :D. thanks for doing this :)

ustk

@MacroMachines said in Vst Instrument without having to install the samples:

@ustk Do you maybe have to do it with another quote as in :

PresetHandler::showMessageWindow("Samples imported", "All samples were imported successfully."\n"Please relaunch the instrument.");

or maybe it just requires a space between the /n? as in :

PresetHandler::showMessageWindow("Samples imported", "All samples were imported successfully. \n Please relaunch the instrument.");

I tried both solutions but the first throws a compile error and the second doesn't work...

@ustk Also, as far as my other mentioned slightly more ideal option, do you know what it is that happens upon plugin load that makes it so it works when you reload it? Is there any possible way to trigger the sample references or whatever is happening to be re-initialized automatically upon hitting OK on the popup? I realize that might be slightly more complex than the text solution, just figured it might be worth asking, as then it would simply work without needing to reload at all.

Either way good work :D. thanks for doing this :)

I think it's because samples aren't found at init so the plugin needs a re-init that can only be done this way I imagine. But there might be a solution to this at Christoph's level, dunno...

AxiomCrux

@ustk I just found this in the JUCE doc, taking the output kadenze online course:

void 	drawSingleLineText (const String &text, int startX, int baselineY, Justification justification=Justification::left) const
 	Draws a one-line text string. More...
 
void 	drawMultiLineText (const String &text, int startX, int baselineY, int maximumLineWidth, Justification justification=Justification::left, float leading=0.0f) const
 	Draws text across multiple lines. More...

So he may have used the single line text in the message window class possibly?

ustk

@MacroMachines seems a nice find, but when searching for that I found no references to these methods in Hise, code, only once in a juce file for the multiLine
here's the function that is called in the PresetHandler.cpp, but this is the end of my skills...

void PresetHandler::showMessageWindow(const String &title, const String &message, PresetHandler::IconType type)
{
#if USE_BACKEND
    if (CompileExporter::isExportingFromCommandLine())
    {
	std::cout << title << ": " << message << std::endl;
	return;
    }
		
#endif

#if HISE_IOS
    
    NativeMessageBox::showMessageBox(AlertWindow::AlertIconType::NoIcon, title, message);
    
#else

    ScopedPointer<LookAndFeel> laf = createAlertWindowLookAndFeel();
    ScopedPointer<MessageWithIcon> comp = new MessageWithIcon(type, laf, message);
    ScopedPointer<AlertWindow> nameWindow = new AlertWindow(title, "", AlertWindow::AlertIconType::NoIcon);
    
    nameWindow->setLookAndFeel(laf);
    nameWindow->addCustomComponent(comp);
    nameWindow->addButton("OK", 1, KeyPress(KeyPress::returnKey));
    
    nameWindow->runModalLoop();
#endif

    return ;
};

Natan

This post is deleted!

Frankbeat

In case this isn't yet solved since this old threat stopped growing and some of you are still interrested…

As far as a Mac VST is concerned: I have put my samples folder into the MyInstrument.vst itself. This is possible by right clicking it in Finder and choosing Show Package Content. This opens its subdirectory where you could store your samples folder in.

Of course, this is kind of a hack and doesn't come with the PlugIn recognizing the path automatically, but… Isn't there any string within the bundle that could be changed from something like

%HOME%/Library/Applications Support/your_company_name/

to something like

%HOME%/Library/Audio/PlugIns/VST/YourInstrumentName.vst/Samples

?

Lindon

@Frankbeat The plugin will "look for" the sample folder on start up - this is always in the LinkOS file in the "AppData" folder - I think its a pretty big hack to change this -

Plus it then it makes the sample location very very fixed, as well as making some pretty big assumptions about the machine config. and disk layout, and space availability on your end users machine s(which is why it was done this way to start with) , so the problems with this approach are:

you dont have any known fixed locations across OSes
You dont know how much disk space is available on the users machine even if you knew this location
The location you hard-wire is impossible to change for the user

So the only alternative is to ask the user where they want to put the samples - and use that location(stored in a file that the plugin looks at on start up - that's the LinkOS files)

clevername27

@Lindon @Frankbeat @ustk I realize that embedding the samples isn't useful for most cases. I'm only throwing my hat into the ring here because in my case, it is.

I'm building prototypes to demonstrate things, not creating products for distribution. And in that case, nobody wants to get involved with downloading samples, remembering where they are, remembering to delete them when they're done, etc. They only run the plugin once—and that one time, it simply needs to "work."

Anyway, if anyone has any motion on this, I'd truly appreciate it.

EDIT: I've figured out how to do this one.

Frankbeat

@clevername27 I feel you!

I stopped creating my own plugins because I wouldn't be getting into it enough to fit it to my requirements (I leave that up to the real developers that have way more skills for that matter). But nevermind… It was a lot of fun to experiment with this framework.

And not to forget: This is a great community here! I never experienced a forum that helped me out so much. Salute to you, @d-healey and the great master @Christoph-Hart !

Vst Instrument without having to install the samples

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